Maynooth University Centre for Ocean Energy Research has been awarded €500,000 ($540,000) under the US-Ireland Research Programme for the Control Co-Design for Ocean Wave Energy Conversion project.
The project brings together partners from Maynooth University, Queen’s University Belfast, Northern Ireland and Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University in the US.
The award is funded under the €21 million ($23 million) joint investment announced by the US-Ireland Research & Development Programme, a research and development partnership between the US, the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland.
The Control Co-Design for Ocean Wave Energy Conversion project will see Wave Energy Converters (WECs) deployed to test a new control co-design approach to create a combined power take-off and wave capture structure. The structure aims to improve efficiency, increase power output, and decrease the peak-to-average power ratio.
By making WECs more commercially viable, more hydrokinetic energy potential along the UK and US coastlines can be tapped.
Professor Philip Nolan, director general of Science Foundation Ireland, welcomed the announcement, stating: “The growth of the US-Ireland R&D Partnership Programme since its inception, highlights the significant value of our international collaborations…I am delighted to congratulate the award recipients and their collaborators on their work which spans both fundamental and applied research and has the potential to greatly benefit our collective societies and economies.”
Director of the US National Science Foundation, Dr Sethuraman Panchanathan, said: “This unique research partnership model aims to generate, at speed and scale, valuable discoveries and innovations which are transferable to the marketplace or will lead to enhancements in health, climate resilience and telecommunications to improve our world.”
The programme is supported by Science Foundation Ireland (SFI) and the Health Research Board (HRB) in the Republic of Ireland; the National Science Foundation (NSF) and National Institutes of Health (NIH) in the USA; and the Department for the Economy (DfE) and the Health & Social Care R&D Division in Northern Ireland.
